The Matt Walsh Show - What Are Realistic Standards To Have When Dating?

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

See why hiring doesn’t have to be difficult — when you try ZipRecruiter for FREE: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/walsh #ZipRecruiterPartner Matt Walsh gives dating advice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, now time for everyone's favorite part of the day, maybe. The members block, and this is where we read some emails for people asking for advice and various things. What do we got? From the, Dear Mr. Walsh, I have wanted to send an email or comment for some time, but I've always felt I'd had nothing good to ask. However, now I have a question and have asked friends this, and their opinions bother me, and I feel strongly I am in the right. I'm asking to know if my opinions are vindicated or if I am simply being unreal in my expectation. So here it is. I am a Christian man and have been for the last eight years. I've been in one church this entire time. And over the years, I've found little or no love interest in my church. For the few I have tried, they usually fell flat because of a difference in opinion on how a courtship should go.

I believe that when you're dating someone, you should not be talking to other potential love interests like you're at a grocery store. I'm not talking about it in a dating relationship. I'm talking about simply devoting yourself to the person you wish to get to know and maybe potentially date. If I'm interested in a woman, for instance, I would not talk to other women with the intention to date them as well. However, it seems in today's culture, women and men court multiple people at a time and then choose what appears to be the best option for themselves. I don't necessarily find this to be wrong, but I feel like if you like someone and are getting to know them with the intention of dating them in the future, you should not be getting to know other potential suitors at the same time. Your thoughts and her advice on this would be appreciated. Well, so you're running into the problem. This is one of the classic fundamental problems.

with the modern dating scene, which is that, which we've talked about plenty of times, which is that nobody knows what to call anything. Nobody knows what to label anything. We've had this idea that it's bad to label. We don't want to put labels on things. And we certainly don't want any idea of like roles or responsibilities in a relationship and certainly not in a relationship between a man and a woman. And because we've decided that as a culture, what we end up with is a dating scene

where nobody knows what's going on. Like nobody has any idea. They're talking to somebody. They don't know, like, what are the phases of it? Where is this supposed to go? What's the point? And if there are phases or steps in the relationship, when do we reach to the next step? And how do we know we're there?

And, you know, like, what is this exactly? So every man is wondering this and every woman's wondering this when they're sitting down to eat with, you know, the other person. They're both sitting there thinking, like, what is this right now? And what's the point of it? And are, am I, is this a thing? Is it not a thing? These are all questions that plague, I think, the modern dating scene. They come into focus in your question. Because my answer would be that if you're actually dating someone, which would, I guess, be the modern analog for courtship,

although I think we should just get back to calling at that courtship, which is the process of, you know, when you have found someone that you want to marry, it's the process leading up to marriage. or rather, you know, which is a leading up to engagement, which then leads to marriage. In courtship, you both know, you're with one person, and you know that the intention is to kind of figure out whether you're going to get married. It's a time of discernment between the two of you, which is what dating allegedly kind of is supposed to be. And if you're in that stage, then, yeah, you shouldn't be talking to anybody else, talking to

anybody else in the sense of like you shouldn't be, you know, still perusing the options. Because it doesn't work unless you're committed to that person and trying to discern and figure out whether this is going to work as a marriage. But if you're not officially dating and you're still in the phase of just like trying to meet people and figure out who you want to date to then lead, hopefully, to engagement and to marriage, then, well, of course you're going to talk to other people. it's because how else would it work? It's like, are you going to, are you going to, you know, you, so let you strike up one conversation with a woman and you think there might be something there. And so then you're not going to talk to anybody else

until you figure out, it just doesn't work that way. You know, hiring used to be really hard. You post your job on multiple sites. You hope the right people see it, and then you wait for them to apply. It's similar to when you're applying for jobs. You search countless places to find a company that fits best with your skills and experience and your passions.

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get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Go to ziprecruiter.com slash Walsh to try ZipRecruiter for free. Again, that's ZipRecruiter. W-A-L-S-H-ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. You mentioned the word suitors. Well, like going back to, if we could go back to the old-fashioned way of doing these things, which was better, you had, you know, a woman had suitors,

and then we landed on one arrangement, and that leads to courtship. But, you know, there are going to be multiple suitors. So I guess you kind of have to figure out what it is, and you have to be not afraid to put a label on it. You have to know, like, is this officially dating or not? Are we official? You know, people don't want to ask these things or it's always awkward to, like, what do you say to someone?

Would we be my girlfriend? Like, it sounds very high school. But you have to have some way of establishing that, okay, we are actually dating right now. That's what this is. It sounds to me like you're, you know, you're not establishing that with any of these women that you're talking to. If it's not established that you're officially dating, then you can't. be upset at them. We're talking to other people.

They have no commitment to you whatsoever. All right, we'll do one more. This is from Liz. Says, Dear Matt and Sean, my husband, 34 male and I, 35 female, are recently married. We're wanting to have a baby in the next few years, but we have some fertility concerns due to our ages and reproductive health issues.

I started birth control at a young age 18 years old and only recently have come off of it. I was told by my parents, doctors, and peers that this is what we're supposed to do so you can go to college, get a job, become established, et cetera, and then later get married and have kids. Now it's looking like I won't be able to have kids in the future and wanted to know your thoughts on adoption and fostering.

As much as we really want to have our own biological child, that may not be an option for us, is adoption or fostering a child worth pursuing. My husband and I are by no means wealthy, and we both must work full time. Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much and love listening to your show. Yeah, this is, it's important that people hear your story too because there's many stories like this. Young women sold this story about birth control, the magic pill. It solves all your problems. And, you know, it's like there's no tradeoffs at all. Just take the pill. You don't have babies. And then because it's, it's too early and you haven't established yourself. And then down the line, whenever you want to have kids, you can have kids. But what it turns out, that it's not always that easy. And that there are, it ends up being a tradeoff in so many cases. And it's a tragedy, too, because it's a tradeoff that, that you might not understand was a tradeoff until until it becomes a parent. So, I mean, hopefully, and there are, if you have fertility issues and all the rest of it, I'm sure you're looking into, you know, you're talking to doctors and everything.

So hopefully for you, it will still turn out that you can conceive a child. But if you can't, what about the option of adoption and fostering? Well, I obviously can't tell you whether that's the right option for your family, but it's absolutely something worth investigating and certainly talking about and praying about. Adoption is a beautiful vocation, and it's something that's very much needed. You know, if you're the adopted parent of a child, then you are the parent. If you're the adopted mother, you are the mother. It's just as much as if you conceive the child yourself.

So, yeah, I would absolutely think about that and pray about it and have a period of discerning about that as well. You know, I've said before, I've said many times, that I think every married couple is called to parenthood. You know, every woman is called to be a mother, every man's called to be a father.

And in many cases, that is going to mean, like in the biological sense of conceiving a child. But not in every case. There are other ways of being a mother and of being a father.

And, of course, one of the most obvious ways is through adoption. So, good questions there, and we will leave it there for today. Talk to you tomorrow. God's me. to me can never be